 Okay. So we'll bring the slides back up. Thank you. And just run through a few more details about the program and then open it up for discussion. Okay. So the history of the solicitation, we started this in 2002. This was on the advice of the advisory council. Particularly Maynard Olsen was very strong about the idea of having investigator-initiated ideas. And so that's carried through. We refined the program announcement after a couple of years of experience because it's sort of a broad description of what we're looking for because we're not trying to constrain it too much. So we were able to refine the way we describe what the program is about. And also at that point, NIMH joined the solicitation. I don't think Andrea and Thomas are here. They weren't able to make it. But essentially every three years we renewed the program announcement after discussions like this with the council. And we renewed it with high enthusiasm. We did have a sort of pilot project, P20, for a while. We had very few applications. We never made an award. So we just decided to take that out of the program. We couldn't actually articulate what that would look like very effectively. On the 2010, we're off the three-year cycle just because the stuff about the application changed. And so we had to issue a new program announcement. And now we're at the end of the previous one and need to get some input from you. So these next few slides are just have here in the set in case we need to come back to them quickly. But they're the same ones that you saw before. And the only thing I'm going to add here is to stress that whereas originally the minority action plan was integrated with the SEGS program announcement, now we've split that off and it's a separate application. But when you apply for a SEGS grant, you must also put in the R25 for the diversity action plan grant. And you cannot be awarded a SEGS grant until we've worked with you in case your original application for the DAP wasn't of appropriate quality. We'll work with people to improve it so that they can run an effective diversity action plan program. So these must go together. I should say if we have two grants in one city, then they'll work together, not get two separate DAPs. A SEGS is not, sometimes it's useful to say what something isn't. So a SEGS is not just an expand, it's not supposed to be just 10 years out of somebody's lab of what they usually do. It's not a program project that is, it's not a bunch of projects operating pretty much independently that have a little bit of complementarity. It should not be a resource or an infrastructure for an existing department. And actually all of the things that are listed here were examples of applications that we got in the first few years. And so it helps to say what they're not. It's not primarily for the collection of a set of data in the absence of some novel concept or methodology, though we understand that in order to demonstrate that something is working, you may have to collect some data. And it's not just outstanding science that fails to meet SEGS criteria. And this is the hardest one because we talk with lots of people who have a lot of fantastic ideas, really outstanding investigators. And then the question is just does it meet the other criteria of the SEGS? So it's not that some of these other things are bad science, but a lot of the ideas that we hear about don't rise to the level of that the staff believes will meet the criteria of this. And the staff's assessment is pretty strongly reinforced by the review process. Okay. So these are, again, they're interdisciplinary, integrated, and synergistic. So by synergistic, one of the things I mean that we tell people when they're coming to us with their ideas, if you have a component that is not absolutely necessary for the other parts of the project to work, don't put it in the application. Should not have stuff hanging out there on the edge because, you know, it's the department chair and the department chair wants you to put his project in there, sorry, for department chairs. These can include an ethical, legal, and societal component. It's not required. As you know, there is a separate program for the SEERS, for centers. But if it fits well with the project, there can be an LC component. We require a management plan for the team. But we also feel that these require a very strong direction from a PI. We require a PI to be a 30% effort for this project. And so that's why I asked the question to reinforce DD's statement. Because somebody, if you got a whole bunch of PIs at 5%, you know, it's going to be particularly hard to make the decision. We have to drive in this direction. We have to now narrow the project and do the things that are going to get us to our goal hopefully in 10 years. So that's why we require a PI 30% effort. So all these are features that we're essentially asking you about should these continue to be in the program. During the review process, the peer review process includes an applicant interview. They come into town for two hours and they get their chance in front of the review committee for questions to be asked. These are particularly, it's particularly important when you have these multidisciplinary projects, when you have things that are risky, that means they're not going to be able to explain everything in the application. And so the reviewers get a chance to, you know, to bounce ideas off and see how people are thinking about the problem more so than you can in the grant application. And we feel for this amount of money investment, we want to have that kind of information in the review process. There is an administrative site visit after three years. We bring along a team of external scientists to help us assess the progress in that project and to determine whether we would like to invite a competitive renewal. People can submit competitive renewal. We can't stop them. But I think in every case, people have gotten extremely good advice from these administrative site visits. And then the renewal itself requires not only that you're meeting your initial goals, but you've got to be staying at the state of the art. Obviously, if the field is sort of passing by, there's no point in NHGRI funding another five years if the rest of the field is caught up. Again, so more details on the budget. Operating costs, people are allowed to request up to $2 million a year direct costs. These budgets are big enough that we essentially require people to figure out over the five years how to reallocate budgets to keep things running so we don't adjust for inflation. In addition to the $2 million that we call operating costs, applicants may request up to $500,000 spread over the five years of specialized equipment. We've already said the duration of each segment is up to five years, maximum of 10 years. There have been a few awards that we've made for shorter times for various management sort of program management purposes. So not all of them are awarded for five years. I should say not all of them are awarded at the full requested cost for various reasons. We've made some awards at lower levels. And again, this is another important question for council consideration. We've always said that we anticipate funding a maximum of about 10 of these. If we had 10 at $3 million, that's about 8% of the extramural budget, which would be a significant investment. So here are the investments that we've made over the years since the program started. We've been up as high as you see as about $25 million in one year. What numbers am I and right now our commitment for FY 14 is as a 14 and a half million dollars. That's commitment coming from previous years. As you know, we'll be looking at new applications in the closed session. What are these numbers? This is the genome institute dollars, excluding the diversity action plan. We account for that separately. That's been up as high as $3 million a year. Of course, the diverse actually up to $3 million in one year of diversity action plans that were associated with SEGs. There are diversity action plan programs associated with some some other grants programs also. But usually it's a lot lower than that. We also invested from genome institute $2.4 million in the stimulus years of stimulus funds. And importantly, we've leveraged our funds and NIMH has leveraged their funds. They've cofunded particular awards for a total of just over $5.5 million spread out over the awards and over the years. And they also invested $6 million of stimulus funds to get started one of the one of the projects. So this is a very highly selective program. We've received 75 newer amended applications out of which there have been 15 awards. We received 12 competing renewals or amended competing renewals and made five awards out of that. In addition to that, we've talked with dozens of of potential applicants. So we probably talk with three times as many potential applicants as actually come in as applications. We try to stress over and over again in the in the program announcement. Talk with us first. These are big hard complicated applications to write. We don't want people to write them if they're very clearly not going to be qualified. So quite some fair number of people make an inquiry and that and then they decide not to apply. But each year we have almost twice as many people who send a letter of intent. And these are usually about four pages very densely written letters of intent. And then the team of us here within the Institute and and in IMH look at these and provide feedback. And sometimes it's this is just so far off that we don't think you should apply. And other times it's here's what you would need to do to modify this in order to in our opinion submit a successful application. So David had a graphic that showed sort of what the awards were here is just in a different format. The awards that have been made over time the first four years. And again I've indicated the the the grants that received cofunding from NIMH and then subsequently another set of awards three years are missing 2005 2008 and 2012 in those years we didn't make any awards. And as you see again here is the renewal so one two three four should be five renewals right. Are they up there. Yes one two three four five five renewals. Not all of these renew. So you have these in front of you. I just want to make the point that you've heard from two of the SEGs and just the kinds of projects that people are doing are addressing I would say deep important problems in genomics contemporary problems in genomics. So here we have not only single cell transcriptome but very high very large numbers of single cell transcriptomes. It's one of the goals here and then being able to engineer human genomes so that for example you would take take fibroblasts from an individual differentiate those down different differentiated pathways in those cells modify specific nucleotides in promoter regions that are not random but that are the variations that you find in patients and test the transcript transcriptome again other outcomes of those particular variants in different tissue types. Those are pretty hard experiments to do in real people. So I think I just for time I'm not going to go through these you have these in front of you if you'd like to look at them and these are all what I just extracted some key sentences from the websites of each of these. You can get to these websites from our website. So I'm going to move on. Sorry those three groups and the other ones who I didn't include as was mentioned we have an annual grantee meeting with this program. These are pretty interesting meetings because we're really getting people together who don't necessarily talk to each other otherwise they don't necessarily go to the same meetings. They're running the same kinds of big grants and there's quite quite interesting intersections that are revealed as people give their talks. It's also been a great opportunity for students to find good postdocs and so forth and people to move around amongst the SEGs including the diversity action plan participants. So the team of program directors who are involved here is significant across the Institute. Lisa, Elise, Adam, Colin, Tina, Peter, Brad, Ajay, Aaron, Jeff and the other Jeff. I'm the other Jeff. Lou and Andrea and Thomas from NIMH and of course Keith, Ken and Rudy keep us all honest by running fantastic reviews. These are hard to review. It's an important component of the program. So the questions for you, some of the questions for you are the ones that I've listed here. Do you support that we continue the program? Is the scope about right? We've described in some of the earlier slides what we're trying to achieve here. We're working on broadening the language to apply across the new strategic plan. Some of that's relatively easy. I think we want to maintain the level of innovation, forward-lookingness. Do you think the budget level is okay? The number of awards and anything I've told you about the program management that you have questions about or from your own experience that you would suggest that we change? I'd just like to open it up. Rudy, you want to run the... More other questions obviously about the program. I was wondering whether you have any special guidance you give. It seems like a lot of these programs do involve multiple institutions. Do you give any particular guidance with respect to intellectual property across institutions? I'm trying to remember if this is one in some program announcements that we have written that we suggest that people work that out before they get the grant. That's the main advice. Because it's really messy if you try to work it out after you get the grant. But other than that, no. If you have suggestions about language you think we could include that would be great. At the risk of speaking out here since I'm new on the council. I think it's a fantastic program and if what I heard correct... Stop there, okay. I like it for many reasons. One is the fact that it is doing things that are risky and are hard to get done otherwise. I like very much that it is investigator initiated and that in some sense it counterbalances I think an NHGRI tendency to be a little heavy-handed on the management side of pushing particular programs. And so I think it's a good counterbalance to that. Third thing is if I heard correctly that there were about half of the SEGs are renewed. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean for something that's supposed to be high risk I think having a 50% success rate for renewal is actually too high which to me would suggest that the program is actually too small. You want to see more failure. Yeah. Just something on that I think that's probably some element of it but I think also some of these things just take their so challenging it takes a certain amount of time to get fun to make the progress that's needed so there's probably a balance of that. And I would like to see more SEGs funded as well. I think it's a great program and looking around NIH I don't I don't see any other programs like the SEGs. Ross go ahead. Yeah so I'd also like to thank David and Dee Dee for these presentations and they they really exemplify how well the program can work. I mean clearly high high risk initially I mean who would have thought sticklebacks right you know and and it's informed us so much and and gotten to the point where you know these technologies these approaches are accepted so they're not high risk anymore. They're hard still but but it's working beautifully. So and they were the investigator ideas as Bob said and the investigator initiated is so important. The other thing I think is really important is those years where there weren't any that were funded. You don't have it's investigator initiated if there aren't really sterling challenging ideas coming forward you don't put the money out. So it's it seems to be working very very well. Howard. So I also think it's a great program and and although I'd like to see it expanded I just wonder on the on the budget constraints but towards that end it this does seem to me because the success of this program of a potential partnership opportunity with some of the other institutes. I mean I think this really unique program that brings together resources and I really like the time window. You have ten years you have to get renewed it really keeps the pressure on innovation. So Jeff can you expand on that Jeff Schloss. Yeah so I mean in terms of I mean NIMH has been a good partner but over the years have we shopped this for other institutes and not had interest or have we not done a significant shopping. I don't remember. I'm thinking vaguely NINDS one year but I'm not sure does anybody remember. I think not and I mean I think in part we haven't had applicants come to us with something that sounded relevant. I should say on a program announcement another institute doesn't have to join it for us to go to them if we get an interesting application. They could co-fund again it's not a set aside it's just a program announcement which is an expression of interest. So that mechanistically at NIH that's completely possible to do. Is that what happened originally with NIMH? Is that the one institute that you have partnered with? I don't think so. I think they saw the program announcement and just liked it. We have a couple questions and back up. Yeah we want to decide the order. At least you were up first. I just wanted to make a comment about Bob's question about whether a 50% was a good or a bad success rate. And Jeff had mentioned that there is an administrator review between the first grant period and a potential second grant period. And those are pretty rigorous reviews. We provide a lot of we bring it outside people and provide a fair amount of feedback and I think people applicants have found that really useful. I think that has not always made a difference in terms of whether someone succeeded or not but I think I think it actually does help in terms of providing really a good preliminary view of how the project is going and the direction that they're thinking about moving in. And really there's been some correction in those when there was good stuff that the PIs may not even have identified but outsiders could find it and so that might be part of the reason that we have a higher success rate. Lisa go ahead. Hello yes to address the question about other ICs. Certainly we can go to any IC if something comes in with something we think is appropriate for another institute we absolutely can go there. But I think what happens is that the PIC that it's genome and mental health okay I can do any disease for this process but you know I'm going to choose a mental health one and so I think mental health has really benefited because lots of grants specifically focus on mental health topics so you know that may be a selling point to other institutes if you're on it there may be a focus there. Does NIBIB have any involvement in this because I think I mean DD's project for example might be something they'd be really interested in. These projects probably started by predated NIBIB so but yeah for their creation right I mean they haven't been around 10 years have I don't think. So so I mean the only the really the only mechanism we have other than to knock on doors which we could do these these program announcements all go into something we call the early notification system so that all the other institutes have an opportunity to see every institute has an opportunity to see that every announcement that every other institute posts. So there is that opportunity but we haven't done the door knocking on thing. How many if you do get like NIBIB or any that I'm not to talk about them specifically but I there really is no other mechanism like the SAIS and I've looked at all the ones that are possible across the other institutes which you would know well but they have very complex mechanisms and requirements and I just hope that you wouldn't lose any of the unique features of the SAIS in partnering like that just to make sure you don't lose that. And that's a very important point actually when NIMH decided to join us they said we like this program. All we want to do is add a couple sentences about stuff we're interested in we do not want to change the way you manage this program. So I'll jump on the bandwagon I think it's a it sounds like a terrific program and the examples we heard were great. I guess my question is you started out and you hit this number of about two million per program it seems about right was that a fortuitous sweet spot have you had to turn away any that are just too big of those that you reject curious level. So we don't let them come in bigger. Some of the people around the table may tell you that when they were applicants they said oh my god you know we put this thing together we've got so many people excited about this program we can't possibly do this for just two million dollars. Other advice that we got at the beginning of the program was that we should do it for one million dollars of operating costs. So we just sort of did a seat of the pants and put it out there for two million dollars and I mean that you know it's balancing against other parts of the portfolio the other thing I should say is that we started it in two thousand and it was two million dollars. We have had some inflation since then so the value of the grant has actually gone down but we're just trying to balance all the factors and two million is a nice round number. If you have we haven't come up with a strong rationale for changing from that. Just so everyone's on the same page that's two million dollars in direct cost. So the typical grant size is more like three million in total. Right and that two million by the way we specifically to not discourage partnerships that in our calculation of the two million direct cost is it does not include indirect costs from a collaboration at another institution because we want to if anything encourage rather than discourage. So actually now the NIH rules say that but when we started this the NIH rules did not say that. Jill. I was just wondering about that because when DD described her her SEGs it's you know there were a huge number of names there and I'm just wondering to what you know what's the average size in terms of people that are funded versus leveraging other sources of funding to sort of grow out the efforts or something. Over the time period so people come and go so it would average around 50 counting everyone. Five oh yeah. At it right now I mean well in the last year the grant is 50. Okay and probably yours is a little smaller than that. It is smaller so so we would tend to probably have maybe a total of 20 people including graduate students postdocs and PIs over the four or five labs that would be participate in any one time. Again if you integrate it over time you could add quite a few names but. So this was a big question that came up when one of I won't mention the name but one of the labs that had one of these and did apply for a renewal which ultimately wasn't awarded the renewal of that particular grant. People were kind of astounded by the amount of progress that had been made and said well you know how much of the this progress that you're telling about is from the SEGS grant versus others and he said oh it's almost all from the SEGS. He said I do have another grant but that isn't another big grant from another agency but that has a completely separate set of aims and there's some synergy but so I think most of these at probably at least the beginning don't have a lot of leverage. You have to find ways to you know to keep some of the activity focused parts of the activity going toward the end. Just at the risk of stepping into something that you may have thought about a great deal already. I know one thing I did study way back when when I was looking at collaborations among institutions that were funded by NIH was the glue grants that were done by NIGMS. I assumed that you guys studied that closely that whole experience closely to kind of make sure that you avoided those mistakes. We know they're a nightmare to review. Well in addition there was a report that was done on kind of what went wrong and why you know they decided not to continue NIGMS decided not to continue with those glue grants and it sounds like you're avoiding those problems and that's great but you know there is a nice report by NIGMS actually evaluating what went wrong. So I don't want to cut the discussion off but I also don't want to drag it out unnecessarily. I'm hearing party strong enthusiasm that the program should continue that barring deep insights into reasons to change the costs which are probably about in the right range and that again also that the idea of having about probably not more than about 10 of them but having up to 10 of them at any time budget allowing that sounds like a good overall plan. Is that correct? That a reasonable summary. Can the number be something that's I mean you say about 10 but when we looked at the budget overall and the priorities it seems like and it's not every year you'll maybe one year you have three stellar grants I mean the flexibility to vary around the 10. Yeah. So I think that the 10 is more of a way to send a message to the community that that these are really going to be highly competitive and that if they see that we have seven of them it's not like we're going to award five or six or seven more this year. So that it's been useful that way to say these are this is really competitive. But yes there are there have been years when we've funded multiple and so people are hearing the suggestion that we might go over 10 do I see sort of nodding or depends on availability of funds and whatever and what we discuss in a discussion like we're going to have tomorrow about your priorities. Well that's something that we revisit. Could you tell us what without divulging anything what you see do you find yourself just pulling your hair out because you've got three really good ones and you only feel like you can fund one. I would say generally no there was one year when we wanted to fund a couple and we were really constrained for budget and what we did was we got them both started on lower budgets and it turned out they were doing fine on those budgets. They would have liked to have more money. There was no question about that. But they were doing acceptably and then you know we were able to add some supplements here and there. But we try to manage it as best we can. But I would say no there have not been cases where you know where we really really wanted to fund two more and couldn't do it. If I remember correctly again people back there remind me. I do think one of the strengths of the program is this bottom up aspect and that that is going to mean flexibility in in what looks like a great set of proposals or not. And over time that average of 10 has worked out to less than 10 because it's been seen sort of as a maximum against which sometimes you're less. Right. So I think right now if you counted them up. There'd be six with the current round then currently under review but they'll probably be less than 10 in the coming year. Yeah. I would say that I think it's appropriate that the size of the program depends upon the quality in the novelty and the innovation of the ideas but I think that also means you should be prepared for the possibility that some years would bounce above 10 instead of instead of below. Yeah. I mean partially it's you know the PIs or potential applicants are doing a calculation. Well they have six of these. You know I'm going to be competing I don't know how many more applications will come in they make a calculation of how they want to invest their grant writing time. I'm just wondering if there's any way you could partner this program with your SBIR portfolio so you could maybe add something on top of that since there's discussion of IP and spin outs. Boy that's it really is separate money. I guess there's nothing to stop applicants from coming in with a small business though it would be you know centers dollars not SBIR dollars that gets that gets really complicated I guess the only other comment I'd make there is we actually fund companies at NHGRI again we're kind of unusual. We fund companies under RPGs when they're the right place to do that particular kind of research and a lot of our technology development portfolio does involve IP and licensing and spinning out to companies some of which then become small businesses and are eligible for SBIR money. It's an interesting idea I think it's mechanistically is pretty hard. Okay I think we're finished. All right thank you. Thank you Jeff thank you counsel.